244 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

75. And yet all this is but the lowest part and narrowest reach of Angelico’s conceptions. Joy and gentleness, patience and power, he could indicate by gesture-but Devotion could be told by the countenance only. There seems to have been always a stern limit by which the thoughts of other men were stayed; the religion that was painted even by Perugino, Francia, and Bellini, was finite in its spirit-the religion of earthly beings, checked, not indeed by the corruption, but by the veil and the sorrow of clay. But with Fra Angelico the glory of the countenance reaches to actual transfiguration; eyes that see no more darkly, incapable of all tears, foreheads flaming, like Belshazzar’s marble wall,¹ with the writing of the Father’s name upon them, lips tremulous with love, and crimson with the light of the coals of the altar-and all this loveliness, thus enthusiastic and ineffable, yet sealed with the stability which the coming and going of ages as countless as sea-sand cannot dim nor weary, and bathed by an ever flowing river of holy thought, with God for its source, God for its shore, and God for its ocean.

76. We speak in no inconsiderate enthusiasm. We feel assured that to any person of just feeling who devotes sufficient time to the examination of these works, all terms of description must seem derogatory. Where such ends as these have been reached, it ill becomes us to speak of minor deficiencies as either to be blamed or regretted: it cannot be determined how far even what we deprecate may be accessory to our delight, nor by what intricate involution what we deplore may be connected with what we love. Every good that nature herself bestows, or accomplishes, is given with a counterpoise, or gained at a sacrifice; nor is it to be expected of Man that he should win the hardest battles and tread the narrowest paths, without the betrayal of a weakness, or the acknowledgment of an error.

“Spirits in Prison” (cf. Vol. IV. p. 100) and “the Mount of Olives,” in the cells of S. Marco. The passage at the end of § 74 refers to “The Last Judgment,” also in the Academy.]

¹ [Daniel, ch. v.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]